Support 150 Mauritian Youth Agripreneurs

Just like many other countries across the globe, Mauritius also entered a Covid-19 imposed lockdown between March and June 2020. This meant that all of our education programs came to a grinding halt, including the remaining groups of young Agripreneurs that was scheduled to visit Farmcity during the March holidays.  As we had shared in our earlier report, we spent the lockdown harvesting, sorting, packing and giving the organic vegetables produced on the Learning Farm to vulnerable families who needed it most. It was a herculean task and was only possible because we had volunteers from the community who stepped up to help with transport, security and distribution. 

While the lockdown ended in May 2020, and normal activities have largely resumed within the country, national borders have remained closed with extremely limited international flights into the island. This means that half of the Farmcity team continues to be abroad and unable to return home to Mauritius at the time of this report.

However, the other half of the team based in Mauritius have been doing an excellent job holding down the fort! So after many planning meetings over Zoom and WhatsApp, we were able to welcome another wonderful group of junior Agripreneurs to Farmcity. 

On 23 September 2020, the junior youths from the Triolet SSR Disability School spent an enriching morning at Farmcity. We'll let the pictures do the talking for the rest of this report.

Our social media post on SSR Disability School Visit

What's Next:

What started as an initial project to support 150 Mauritian Youth Agripreneurs has turned into so much more! We have learnt so much from the youths that graced our farm with their presence. We are grateful to everyone who has supported our project with their generous donations and words of encouragement. 

Covid-19 has certainly shown a bright spotlight on the vulnerabilites in our local food system. The silver lining of this is a heightened awareness of the need for more Agripreneurs who can provide innovative and sustainable solutions for a resilient food system. We are heartened to see an increase in the number of aspiring Agripreneurs who are heeding this call, and we also see that more needs to be done to create a supportive environment for them to thrive it. To that end, we will be setting up the Agripreneurs' Hub at Farmcity, that will offer aspiring agripreneurs a chance to test-bed their idea on a small scale, in a collaborative space, with like-minded agripreneurs. You can read more about The Agripreneurs' Hub here: www.farmcity.co/hub.

We are thus going to end fundraising for this current project on GlobalGiving, and will update you all on the next project fundraising goal.

With love,